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Text-to-speech enables your computer to read aloud web pages, text documents, emails and PDF documents in a natural sounding voice. Some software now includes additional tools such as spell checkers, homophone support and visual highlighting that can help when producing your own written work.

Those with dyslexia often find that text-to-speech software provides significant support if they struggle with reading or digesting text on the computer screen. Hearing text being read aloud in a natural sounding voice also helps dyslexic people proof-read their own written work. For some people it is much easier to hear the mistakes than see them.

Most importantly, text-to-speech software can offer those with dyslexia a high degree of independence when it comes to reading and writing.

What software is available?

There are different types of text-to-speech software available, all of which can be purchased from Dyslexic.com.

ClaroRead is a simple toolbar that sits at the top of the computer screen and will read aloud any on-screen text in Microsoft Word, Adobe Reader, Internet Explorer, emails and many other applications. It contains visual highlighting to help users follow the text as it is read aloud, word prediction feature, homophone checker, coloured overlays and much more. It is available to purchase as a box copy or digital download (instant product sent via email), and for Windows and Mac. Find out more about ClaroRead by following this link >> http://ian.lt/1MTZiMy

Read&Write is an easy-to-use toolbar that provides speech feedback, phonetic spell checking and many other literacy support tools to help with reading and writing. It also contains written and picture dictionaries to help understand the meanings of tricky words and homophones, translation tool, screen masking and word prediction feature. It is available to purchase as a digital download or as a USB, and for Windows and Mac. Find out more about Read&Write by following this link >> http://ian.lt/1L1AWOe

Kurzweil 3000 is a powerful text-to-speech and literacy support tool that enables users to convert printed text documents into accessible electronic formats. This can then be read aloud by a natural sounding voice. It comes with dual highlighting (highlights a sentence, line or phrase in one colour, and each word in another colour to help improve reading performance), translation feature, word prediction and much more. It is available to purchase as a box copy for Windows and Mac. Find out more about Kurzweil 3000 >> http://ian.lt/1L1HUTe

Penfriend gives dyslexic users the confidence to write more, the accuracy to write what they mean, and the speed to write more in the time available. It contains text-to-speech functionality to read aloud words on the screen, including words that haven’t been typed yet. It also features word prediction, using a dictionary of known words, to help the user with writing. Penfriend XL adds additional functionality in native languages. It is available as a box copy for Windows. Find out more about Penfriend by following this link >> http://ian.lt/1hli83P